Academic stress, coping strategies and depression among university students

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between academic stress, coping strategies and depression among Makerere University students. The objectives of this study focused on examining the relationship between academic stress and coping strategies, the relationship between coping strategies and depression and well as the relationship between academic stress and depression. Makerere university population was taken as our study population and an estimated study population of 150 students was selected. A simple random sample technique was used to select respondents and data collection was done using questionnaires. The data was analyzed using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) to give results. A Pearson’s correlation was used to test the hypothesis. Our study comprised of more male participants within average of 62.0% than the female participants with an average of 37.3%. Many participants were aged 21 to 23 years. Most of the participants were single with a percentage of 94.0%. The study results implied that there is a significant relationship between academic stress and coping strategies among university students (r= .229, P=.000<0.05). Furthermore, there’s also a significant relation between coping strategies and depression among university student (r=.254, P=.002<0.05). However, there is a significant relationship between academic stress and depression (r=-.163, P=.046>0.05). In a nutshell, academic stress has a significant destructive impact in the lives of university students as it’s a major reason for the development of depression due to poor coping strategies of stress. However, with influence form good social support networks among university students, stress can be amicably handled when good coping strategies play in the lives of university students. Therefore, we recommend university student to find good peers for social support as this will help them to with better coping strategies to overcome stressful events while at the university.